Yannik Stevens
Yannik Stevens (born 1994) completed a Bachelor’s degree in Multilingual Communication (Spanish, English, and German, with a focus on Business Communication) and holds a Master’s degree in Romance Studies (Spanish and Italian, with a specialization in Latin American Studies). He studied at Cologne University of Applied Sciences, the University of Valencia, and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. He is currently a Research Associate in the Department of Romance Studies at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. on media reflexivity in Argentine and Uruguayan fantastic literature. He is interested in the extent to which literary texts written between 1880 and 1980 already anticipate modern media formats. His research interests encompass the literatures and cultures of Argentina, Uruguay, Panama, and Puerto Rico, as well as the relationship between memory, historiography, and literature. In this context, he is particularly interested in literary and cultural responses to the Spanish Civil War and the military dictatorships of Latin America. Further areas of research include the history and aesthetics of popular cinema, especially the works of Alfred Hitchcock, the James Bond franchise, Louis de Funès, and Elvis Presley, as well as media philosophy, with a particular focus on the thought of Vilém Flusser.
Articles of Yannik Stevens
Die Geste des Streamens. Ein ironisch-kritischer Kommentar zu Vilém Flussers 106. Geburtstag
Conceived as an ironic homage to Vilém Flusser on the occasion of his 106th birthday, “The Gesture of Streaming” seeks to extend Flusser’s phenomenology of gestures into the digital platform age. By referring to his reflections on media nomadism, technical images and telematic society, the essay considers streaming as a predominant gesture of the twenty-first century.
The text argues that streaming fundamentally alters the relationship between users and media. Whereas previous media cultures were structured by ownership and material possession, digital platforms increasingly privilege temporary access and permanent availability. Music, films, and books are no longer collected and preserved but encountered within continuous streams of information. As a consequence, cultural consumption becomes detached from responsibility, care, and lasting commitment. The gesture of streaming is thus characterized by fluidity and the perpetual search for meaning within a society where all media seem to be disposable and accessible at once.
The essay further contends that this logic has transcended the realm of media and progressively shapes social relations themselves. Through dating-apps, individuals encounter one another as elements within a stream of profiles, images, and data. Humans stream each other in the way they stream media: infinite availability, replaceability, and continuous selection form their relationships. By transferring the logics of streaming from media to interpersonal encounters, the essay offers an insight into digital culture and reflects on the anthropological consequences of online-communication in the light of Flusser.